


and though blood be but water

by thefangirlofhp



Series: the ash in our clothes [1]
Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Brace yourselves, Character Death, F/M, Female Hange Zoë, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Leelu Zoë Ackerman, Levihan Children, levihan - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:00:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23676514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thefangirlofhp/pseuds/thefangirlofhp
Summary: “If I have ever loved someone in my whole life, then I have only ever loved you, baby,” Kuchel sat in her bed, her thin arms around her only son, and her eyes looked so sad.  “I love you, baby. You’re the only one I love. If the whole world loves you, know that I am always the first. And if no one loves you anymore, then I would have to be dead.”
Relationships: Hange Zoë & Levi, Hange Zoë/Levi
Series: the ash in our clothes [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1707631
Comments: 9
Kudos: 79





	1. Chapter 1

“If I have ever loved someone in my whole life, then I have only ever loved you, baby,” Kuchel sat in her bed, her thin arms around her only son, and her eyes looked so sad. “I love you, baby. You’re the only one I love. If the whole world loves you, know that I am always the first. And if no one loves you anymore, then I would have to be dead.”

He’d looked up at her, fascinated and addicted to the safety and comfort that wrapped him in a cocoon whenever he was in her lap. His small hands played with her long hair and his face pressed to her lean neck. “What’s loving someone mean, Mama?”

“It means..” Kuchel’s voice was a faint teary whisper. “That you’re the only thing in this whole world that makes me happy. That when I see you, my heart beats like this,” she took one hand and pressed it to her bosom for her son to detect the rapid beating. “Feel that, baby? My heart gets excited when you smile, and I’m so happy. Loving you means that I want to give you the whole world and I’m so sad when I can’t. It means... it means that you’re the only one I’m worried and concerned about. It means everything, baby. Love... is rare, you don’t get much chances with it. It means that when you love someone, you gotta hold onto them with everything you have because love is blissful and so rare. I love you baby, so so much. You make me the happiest I can ever be.”

He looked up in awe at her. “Happier than tea, Mama?”

Kuchel smiled, and her smile looked so tired and strained. She gently poked his nose and he giggled. “Just a little happier than tea, baby.”

“Even when I’m messy?” He grinned cheekily at her. There were few things he did that annoyed his mother- being stubborn, fussy and messy were the three. “And when I don’t wanna change the channel?”

Kuchel laughed softly and smoothed a hand through his identical dark tresses. They looked so alike. “I still love you then. But that doesn’t mean I’m not annoyed and will give you time out.”

He grinned at her and she kissed his forehead for long.

Three days later, she was murdered and he watched.

_______________________________________________

It was his fault, that he was nearly sure of. If he had bothered to lock the door behind him when he came home from school, the killer might have had an obstacle in his path and gave them both a fair warning. But as a grown up, when Levi went back to their home and inspected the door, it was hardly a lock. One sure ram of the shoulders would have brought it down. He was careful in laying the blame on himself, and it was only in times he hit rock bottom when he let it encompass him completely.

But he hadn’t locked the door out of forgetfulness and Kuchel hadn’t reminded him when he bounded into her room excitedly to tell her what they’d learned in school. She was busy managing the whirlwind he’d been, busy instructing him to calm down and busy trying to do it with her arms and embraces. 

“We learned bouta Solar System, Mama!” Levi hopped up and down on the bed, his school bag still on his back jumping along. His few possessions rattled in it along noisily. 

“Hmm, how about you tell me?” She reached for his elbow but he hopped away with a giggle. 

“There’s the Sun and Sagurn, and Play-Dough, and Snickers, and- and- Earth! We are on earth, Ma! Earth is ours and Snickers is for the aliens.”

“Snickers and Play-Dough, baby?” 

“Uhu,” he nodded. “Oh wait,” that got him to stop and he frowned deeply, thinking. “No. It’s-it’s....”

Kuchel seized the chance to grab him and pull him to her. Levi shrieked in joy and laughed his head off when she tickled him. He squirmed in her arms, tears leaking from his eyes and he kicked out. 

When Kuchel suddenly cried out and rapidly let go of him, he froze in terror. His mother sat in bed, hugging her abdomen and her face scrunched up in pain. All the wind was knocked out of his lungs and he hastily sat up.

“Mama? A-are you-? I’m so sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” He sat frozen, eyes wide and feeling terrible for hurting his mother. “M-Ma? Are you ok? W-does it hurt?”

She ignored him as she focused on her breathing and it was a good two minutes before her face relaxed and her eyes opened. “That hurt, Levi. Don’t do it again.”

“I’m sorry,” he softly whispered, his small fingers toying with each other nervously. She sighed and opened her arms for him. He quickly rushed into her embrace and sank in its figurative warmth. Kuchel was rarely warm anymore. “I’m sorry, Ma.”

“I accept your apology,” she murmured in his hair. “It’s all right now. You didn’t mean it. Just be careful, baby, all right?”

She sent him to the kitchen to make a report of the food in their possession. When he came back with moody news of an apple, some tuna, a bit of milk he’d drank the bulk of that morning, a bit of bread and some leftover soup from two days ago, she sighed. 

“You don’t want the soup, do you?” She deduced from his quiet report and he shook his head. “And you’re allergic to tuna for some reason, the milk is for tomorrow morning and your apple for school. No choice but grocery shopping, I guess.”

“Can I come?” He eagerly piped up when she stood up shakily and grabbed her worn down coat. Kuchel rarely took him shopping, only when they had enough money to spare for his childish desires and cravings. It’d been a while since she had the money to get him his favorite honey cereal and the only time he’d gotten a chocolate was in school from his classmate who hated it. Levi lost his liking for chocolate after that and only watched other children enjoy various other kinds. 

“No,” she answered unsurprisingly but it still dimmed his cheer. “When I get better, baby, I promise I’ll treat you. The doctor says it’s only a matter of days, ok?”

“Then we’ll go to the park and feed the ducks?”

She smiled brightly and nodded. “I’ll even take you to see a movie, how’s that sound?”

His eyes widened in shock and the last he heard was her tinkling laugh as she left their small apartment. 

Having grown up and thinking about it, Levi thought Kuchel must have attracted unwanted attention. He didn’t know how his mother came back with some cheese and vegetables when they hadn’t had much money, but the weakness his mother constantly gave off must have attracted her murderer while she was out. He figured that was why the reason she rarely ever took him with her when she left the house. 

He hadn’t been able to sleep, the first onslaught of his lifelong comrade insomnia had been the reason, and he’d tossed and turned in the makeshift bed on the floor Kuchel had made for him when he became a Big Boy. The floor was cold under the blankets he laid on and the end of the blankets scrunched up that made his pillow were suddenly too annoying. He knew he should have been asleep, he shouldn’t be awake so late on a school night, but he for the life of him couldn’t go back to sleep. 

He laid still under the bed he’d rolled under, listening to Kuchel’s faint whistling-like breathing, lulling himself to sleep slowly when he heard it. 

Footsteps. 

Survival instincts made him freeze to deduce if it was coming from someone in their home or not. Their complex was a noisy one and it was never quiet. But then- there was no mistaking it. The footsteps-

A pair of feet were standing in the bedroom, moving towards the bed. The only other furniture Kuchel had in the room aside from a pitiful closet that held their possessions was a full length mirror left from the previous tenant. Levi watched frozen as the tall figure advanced on the bed, in the moonlight a knife glinted and suddenly everything happened too fast. Too quick.

He made to yell out and warn his mother, but the murderer was in a second on the bed and Levi heard the sound of quenching flesh being stabbed, three times, heard a sudden slick that would describe a neck sliced open, heard the sharp inhale of breath from his mother, the repeated grunting of the murderer, the knife whistling in the night.

Saw it all. Saw the blood erupt from a ruptured artery, saw the knife dripping in it rise in the air and come down, saw the silhouette of the man, the movement of his arm, his mother’s arms flailing about, how she suddenly went as still as she moved and saw the man still when his deed was done. 

Calm as he came, he was out and Levi was frozen still. 

Hours may have passed or seconds, he never decided, but he rolled shakily out and collapsed on the mattress to see his mother. Dead. 

Stabbed three times in the abdomen once and the chest twice. Her neck sliced open, her eyes wide, blood gushing on the pillow, on her face, on her shoulders, on the mattress, on her. Her blood. Her clothes. His mother. _His_ mother. The one who loved him. Dead. Killed. For no reason. For all the reasons. Who cared? Dead. 

He chocked when his hands touched her chest, her neck, her forehead, and then his own chest and abdomen, he chocked and shook and tears fell from his eyes and he was shaking all of a sudden and he was panicking, was all alone, was incredibly sad -anguish, he’d later learn-, was crying, was sobbing, was all alone with his murdered mother, was scared. So, so scared. 

Was screaming, begging, sobbing. 

Who cared? 

No one, apparently. No one but him. 

No one but weak, small, thin, frail, underfed him. 

He was suddenly screaming for help, trying to put his mother back together, trying to close her skin again and put the blood back, trying to make her smile. He frantically brushed her hair from her face, held her wounds shut, ignored his tears, screamed for help, left abruptly to fetch the bandaid and bandages and realized he’d need thousands of those. Ran to her coat, searched for money but found none because Kuchel had spent it on food for him and a small sweet lollipop that he’d enjoyed while he did his homework under her supervision. Maybe that was why he couldn't sleep, too much sugar. He'd never know. They didn’t have enough money, he didn’t know where to buy thousands of bandaids and that brown thing his mother used on his scraps. Didn’t have the means to put her back together. 

“Mama,” he was chocking, ripping open bandaids to close her wounds and sobbed when they wouldn’t stick to her skin wet with blood, that the blood wouldn’t let him put his mother back together. He ran to get tissues, to wipe the blood away but it just came back. Her wounds were so deep he could see things under the skin that absolutely terrified him. “H-Hold on. H-here-“

The bandaids ran out and he was left to survey his messy handiwork with wet eyes. The bandaids hardly stuck, ends peeled off, her skin looked odd, was soaked with blood, his whole being was soaked in her blood. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to the open wound on her neck as he sobbed. 

“There,” he cried sharply. “You’re all better.”

Then she hadn’t woken up and he realized it was because he hadn’t kissed the other wounds and his lips were dripping in her blood after he did but she still wasn’t all right. He sobbed. He was trembling.

He needed to wait, he thought. It took him time to heal the wounds on his knees when they happened so he scooted closer to Kuchel, put her limp head in his lap and smoothed her hair with red terrified hands. “You’ll be all right, Maman. I got you.”

He sat, waited for the magic to happen, waited for her to wake up. 

He waited.

And waited. 

And waited. 

The sky was beginning to lighten up. He waited.

.

.

And waited. The sky turned a soft mixture of blues, purples and pinks and oranges. 

He waited. 

.

.

Some time, his eyes drooped shut and a second later he snapped awake and checked his mother. The sky was a clear blue and the sun was shining. The whole room looked red.

He waited.

.

.

She didn’t wake up.

______________________________

The school bus that took him to school waited ten seconds at the bus-stop he had to walk ten minutes to reach. When he didn’t show up ten days in a row, the driver asked the teacher if he’d moved so he wouldn’t have to go to that place eveyday if the kid wouldn’t show up. The school sent a teacher to check with Kuchel when the phone wouldn’t ring. Bills weren’t paid. 

Ten days. Ten days it took for someone to miss him. Ten days for a PE teacher to come by and see the open door and call inside the quiet house. The smell was awful in there. 

Ten days for someone to step in the smelling apartment, to look around and walk into a room right out of a horror show. Ten days for someone to call the Military Police, to notice. 

Ten days for someone to fetch him from where he was immobilized on the blood soaked bed, his arms around his decaying mother’s coat, on the brink of death, for someone to realize he was alive miraculously still, for someone to check his mother, to check him for signs of life. 

“Hey, Levi,” a voice he didn’t hear said. He was too busy being unconscious and dreaming. “I got you, kid. Wall-fucking-Maria. Here, I got you. You’re safe now.“

If he’d been awake he would have heard the lie of his life. He’d never know safety from that moment on, would never know warmth or a good life for the rest of his life. Would never be ok. But he wasn’t awake, he hadn’t heard the lie that would shadow him all his life. Maybe for the better. 

He woke up in an old and dirty hospital, alone and exhausted. A nurse explained to him that Mama was gone now, and she was in a better place now. 

“She’s dead,” he’d said in a plain and bleak voice that would become him. “Murdered.” 

The nurse faltered and tearfully nodded. The Military Police talked to him, asked him about the killer and hadn’t gotten anything useful out of Levi. How could he explain? No one had invented the fucking words yet, no one had taught him them yet. 

If he’d been older, with the experience under his belt, he might have told them how the killer was an amateur, messy and sloppy but with a distinct sign to him. That he was left handed, had a limp, was six feet tall and wasn’t well off from his clothes but that he hadn’t killed to make amends or meet ends, but that it was practice and a fuck up of his head, might have said the killer was a man from his grunts, that he had a disease of the lungs that made him short winded, easily spent and that would have narrowed it down to five fucking people and he’d have recognized him and he’d have him hanged.

If he’d been older, if the Military Police had cared enough, if fucking if. 

If he'd been older, he sometimes lamented, she wouldn't have been killed at all. He'd have sliced the fucker's neck open the moment he opened the door.

What stung him the most was how much he missed her. The therapist talked to him, explained that it was normal to feel everything he felt, talked and talked but he didn’t hear. What stung him was how much he missed her in his life, when no one loved him anymore. People didn’t love him as a child and it hadn’t bothered him because there was always her, waiting for him, loving him. 

And no one loved him now. She was dead. That stung every. Single. Day. 

Petra, later on, asked him if he’d ever loved anyone.

“One,” he’d answered quietly, sunk in the hot water of the hot tub with his squad. The ginger-haired woman looked him carefully in the face. “A long time ago.”

“What happened?” She’d puffed out smoke from the cigarette in her fingers and passed it to Oruo. Eld watched intently his Captain. Levi stared at the bubbling water, cleansing him, disinfecting him, and as he stared, the clear water started turning pink and then it was a deep orange and suddenly a ruby red. His chest was bright blood red, his hands soaked with it, his muscled abdomen bleeding, his chest, his neck. He dipped his hands under the hot water and watched it remove the traces of blood. 

“She was killed,” he answered the now clear water. 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Levi passes on the love

Hanji went into labor very late in the night.

Before they had went to bed, she told him she had a hunch it was anytime now going to happen and he'd spent an extra ten minutes packing the baby's bag again before he went to bed. Funnily enough for them, Levi had been the one nesting throughout the pregnancy, had fussed over every detail and spot, scrubbed furiously till the tips of his fingers went red and sensitive from exposure to chemicals and Hanji had to drag him from the baby's nursery, only managing to do so when she'd dropped a figurative bomb on him that if he kept using cleaning supplies and chemicals they'd stick to the room and it would become an invalid place for the baby to be. That had shut up the soon to be father.

She rolled over calmly, and woke him up with a nudge into his side. Despite having told him that their baby might arrive any time, Levi had never felt such peace and depth in his sleep. Insomnia seemed to have bolted for the door at the first signs of having to man up to responsibility of being a father and left him to actually enjoy shutting down his never shutting up brain. For the first time in his life, Levi hadn't wanted to wake up and felt himself difficultly dragging himself back to the land of the woke.

"Oh yahoo," drily Hanji said when he forced his heavy-feeling eyes open. He felt them drooping shut of their own accord, as if two different poles of a magnet attracted strongly. "You've finally bothered to wake up. Move it, shorty, our kid's ready to see the world."

He rolled over and stuck his head under a pillow and fisted his hand in the sheets. "They've waited nine months. Guess they can for two hours."

He heard Hanji snort and move, "Not likely, shorty. Babies have their own agendas, remember?"

"Shit," he cursed. He really wanted to sleep. "Are you sure? Now?"

"Better be, considering my water just broke in bed."

That had him leaping five feet apart from the mattress and falling unceremoniously to the carpeted floor. "You're shitting me."

Hanji laughed and stood up. He watched her move for the wardrobe and pull out her coat. "You wish I was. Think you're going to move your ass anytime soon, sweetheart? I'm literally going to push a human out of me. Some cooperation would help."

"Yeah, yeah," he mumbled, pushing himself off the floor and rubbing his forehead. He hadn't felt this tired in ages. He couldn't remember the last time he felt like he was getting rid of his tire efficiently only to stop abruptly. "Brat had to chose now, eh? I can't remember the last time I enjoyed sleeping."

"Levi, if you don't get going I'll seriously freak out on you and we'll see how well you'll cope with all I'm bottling up."

He would never have thought birthing a human would take so long. Forget Hanji and what she was going through, he was mentally and physically exhausted by the fifth hour, ready to call it a day and nap out in the waiting room. By the time Hanji's contractions were consistent and shortly separated, he felt that the curve in his spine would be permanent for standing for so long and by the time they were starting to make progress with the birthing and the child felt that enough was enough, it'd been twelve hours already and he was ready to drop. 

Levi felt he was the one feeling the burn of the painful process, Hanji hardly seemed bothered as her contractions occurred more frequently and she spent the waiting time between them on her iPad reading her researches and actually getting some work done while Levi felt like sobbing from exhaustion and played with the thought of asking the nurse for some painkillers. 

When she was born, a squabbling, squealing and red thing covered in blood and fluids, Levi stared numbly as she was pulled out of Hanji, felt a hollow feeling expanding in his chest, felt a pit form in his stomach swallowing him up whole and was brought to reality by Hanji's hand squeezing his tightly.

Sweating, pale but red cheeked, her hair all over the pillows, eyes heavy with tire, Hanji grinned at him as she gasped for breath and just grinned so widely.

A girl, thought Levi as he stared at Hanji. A girl. My. Mine. My girl. My baby. Mine.

"Told you," jested Hanji even as her eyes collected tears and they fell; one of the many forms of her hormones running a coup d'état on her. "A girl."

If Levi was going to be brutally honest with himself, with the world, he didn't think it would even happen. Didn't think something like this would actually come to pass. Marrying Hanji hadn't felt anything special, they were practically joined at the hip long before their strange relationship had flaunted its existence and grown and it had seemed that if the world had allowed them to exist in such a way it would continue to do so. But for something so different like this to happen? An actual child of Levi and Hanji's seeing the world after everything? He'd always had the morbid and grim belief the child would die in Hanji before it could form its gender, or more realistically still, he'd always believed that doing something so... divine as conceiving and making a human life wasn't actually a reality, as dumb as it was. At least, he believed it was so in his case, in their case. For something so... different and normal and happy to happen to him, to them, felt like a cheap trick he was getting sick of being played on him.

"Hey, hey, hey," Hanji was whispering, tightening her death clamp on his hand when his lips parted and cut off wheezes of breath were forced out of him as he watched his child crying out, her own unique cries, the sounds of life. Watched them wipe the blood off her and the fluids to reveal life. Something new.

For Levi, all seeing blood ever meant was taking something away that was there. It was the fact that shaped his whole existence- blood meant taking someone from the world, his brave, oh so brave, soldiers dying in his arms, voicing their last words that went hoarse before they were silent for ever. Blood meant that. He'd never, ever, seen blood bring someone to life, make new sounds shout in the world or give strength to something that hadn't been there.

"Levi, hey, hey, it's all right," said Hanji. Look at him, he thought bitterly in his head, being so insensitive and messed up so much as to be the one panicking and loosing himself in sorrow as his fucking daughter took her first breaths. Making his damn wife who had just last second finished delivering the afterbirth out of her fucking body like a hard dump comfort him. "Levi, it's all right. This is real- this is real. Look at her, isn't she perfect? Our baby, she's crying her first. It sounds so strange, I know. Listen to it, Levi. Hear that? See her? She's real. This is real. We're both alive, here, living. This is real."

His eyes felt hot with tears and his throat clogged up, watching the gentle and practiced movements of the nurses as they cleaned his girl. His fucking girl. He watched them bundle her in a soft pink blanket and carry her to a Hanji holding out her arms eagerly. When Levi saw the tears blurring the eyes of the nurses, he felt his reality seep in. Something horrible had happened. Was it his kid? Was something wrong? Was she dying before she lived? What was the tragedy this time?

But it took his a full minute to realize it was just moved tears of theirs as Hanji cradled the baby and one of them smiled and the other blew her nose carefully. It took him a full minute to realize it was him, them, that was the tragedy causing the tears. The messed up couple who couldn't believe that they had a shot actually at happiness manifested in something so simple as a child. He directed his gaze to the fucking perfect bundle of happiness in Hanji's arms, cooed to by the mother who hadn't had her breasts to feed the baby and had one eye to gaze fondly at her child and thought with such conviction that she deserved this.

Someone squeezed his forearm fondly and the doctor smiled at him when he looked to her instead. "Congratulations," she said with a thousand dollar winning smile.

He jerked his head in what he hoped was a nod.

"Look at you, all noisy and happy," Hanji's trembling hand traced the girl's standard features that felt a treasure to Levi that the world had never seen before. "I'm your mummy, silly. I'm glad you recognize me," Levi nearly jumped from his skin when she opened her so small mouth and gave it a go at a cranky cry. "That silly short stuff over there is your daddy. If he'd bother coming closer we'd know if you recognize him." Hanji turned her gaze to him for a few precious moments. "Move it, clean freak and come meet our baby. She doesn't bite. Yet."

He took tentative steps closer, leaned close to Hanji and took a good look at the fruits of their labor for the past nine months. The girl looked as healthy as he could decide; she was squirming, cranking short cries, and trying to use the facilities at her disposal to live.

She was fucking perfect.

"Wanna hold her?"

He was quick to jolt his head left and right. He wouldn't know how; he'd try to be too careful and slack his arms and she'd slip from his hold, fall to her death maybe or go terribly wrong and he'd have a slice of that bitter reality he was used to or he'd be too rigid and squeeze the living out of her frail body. That would be morbid.

"Can't say I mind. I wanna keep holding her. Feels so right," Hanji smiled shakily and his arms were trembling so violently he had to cross them over his chest. "I'm sorry I can't feed her. I wish I could."

If he was in their reality they were used to, he might have thoughts of commenting something about her tits but the thought didn't cross his mind going hay-wire in attempt to adapt to this new variable introduced to his life. He'd deluded himself with the allure that he was all ready for the kid but now that he was faced with it, he was shit prepared.

They took their girl to weigh her, measure her, check her vitals and Levi followed them hurriedly to watch it all, recorded it, even, on a camera prior to Hanji's request. He followed the nurse wheeling his kid in a cart around the hospital while she chatted cheerfully with him, hadn't listened to a single word she said, had his gaze fixed only on that perfect alien being that was his.

The nurse taught them how to feed the kid -that blew Levi's mind a new one. He was familiar with the idea of supervising people into taking care of themselves, of making sure they ate and slept and trained well to live but to actually do it to someone who had no idea how to move their arms? Jeez.- and showed them how often. The words Levi had read up with Hanji all flew from his head as the nurse spoke and showed them and he had the compelling urge to ask her when the kid could do these things by herself when he was hit with the other reality that he had to teach her how. Teach her how to live.

He got all his soldiers trained and disciplined and was excellent at smoothing out the wrinkles in their behavior with a stern attitude but he'd never, ever, in his life started from the very scratch with someone.

Hours after their kid was birthed, Hanji collapsed into sleep and he was left to sit in that back destroying chair that was one of the banes of his existence with no one but his wife and daughter for company. He kept telling himself that over and over. Wife and daughter. A real family. His own blood.

A text on his phone bought his attention. Armin had just send him a message, asking about Hanji and how she was doing.

Levi typed the words with numb fingers, still disbelieving of them himself and stared at them.

_She did it. A girl. We're at the hospital. They're both asleep now._

Or not. A sharp cry startled him deeply and he was up on his feet before he knew it, standing by his daughter's wheeled cart and looking down at her shifting her head slightly in twitches and her mitten-clad hands moving slowly around as her chest heaved with her crying. 

A shaking hand reaching out and he touched her pink onesie-ed chest. His fingertips followed the rise and fall of her chest with awe until he smoothed his palm on her small chest and felt a heartbeat.

He chocked on a sob suddenly and pressed the other hand to his own chest, feeling his own heartbeat. His other hand felt her own heartbeat, her own breathing and it broke a dam in him. The synchronized beating of their hearts and breathing ripped something so viciously embedded in his core and for the first time in ages, Levi felt hurt, tortured, in pain, raw -so raw- and emotional.

His spine curved as he bowed over, clutching his shirt and screwing his eyes shut. The raw feeling under his palm coming from his daughter rooted his feet to the place, paralyzed his muscles and he shook. Gritting his teeth he sobbed and shed hot tears. Something had come to him, not got taken away. A heart was thumping under his touch and lungs were inhaling air even after his poisonous touch, a human was starting their life- not having it ended. He'd put someone together, made someone, created someone, someone was alive because of him, someone -his someone- was breathing because of him. 

"Hi," he chocked to the crying girl as he wiped his tears away with his sleeve. Gosh, he was a mess, wasn't he? "Hi, kid. I-I'm- I'm-"

I'm your fucking dad and you're never going to have a single bad day in your whole life.

"I'm your dad. You can call me what you want," he paused. He had to teach her how to talk too, didn't he? This was going to be one heck of a ride. Bring it on, he thought with clenching fists and a stubborn determination rising to the challenge. He had no idea how to do it and even if he crashed and burned through parenthood, he was going to fucking do it. "Name's Levi-" shit, she didn't have one. They had to give her one. This was too fresh a slate. "-and I can't understand what you want by crying. Hey, you're probably hungry, aren't you? It's been a while. Hold on."

A few moments later he was screwing shut the cap of the warm bottle and setting it down on the small coffee table in the room and approaching the kid. After many attempts, he had her carefully in his arms and his knees felt like giving out under him. He'd never ever been this nervous in his life.

The magic that baffled him was that the moment she was in his arms nestled in the crook of his elbow and tucked to his breast, he never wanted to set her down. Suddenly, his arm seemed to have been designed for the sole purpose of holding her, its whole existence's point was to cradle this baby and it blended to the job so naturally. The girl's pink lips found the bottle and Levi was fascinated with watching her feed. She fascinated him- nothing would ever grab his attention like she was.

"Look at you," a voice croaked. Hanji grinned at them. "Natural mother hen."

Levi didn't bother to disagree with her. The girl was nearly finished- he had to burp her after, didn't he? Make someone burp, well, that was something he didn't do everyday. He tried to find the words to say but couldn't.

"She has your nose," he finally decided on.

"Poor soul," she jested back. "But I'm glad. Now you can't make fun of my nose anymore.”

Levi, for once, was at loss for words. 

_________________________________

They took her home the next day to a house thoroughly cleaned and tidied up. Hanji took the girl for a tour around the place, even though she had no clue what she was seeing Levi was sure that girl knew more things than him for sure- Hanji had spent the durity of the nine months reading to the kid all her science books aloud, after all. And the kid had her genes too. Levi figured that knowledge just came along with them. 

While she was sleeping, they put her in her crib. Such a moment felt serene and pure to them, its effect magnified when the girl opened her small lips and yawned for the first time in her life. Hanji’s beam could light up a factory.

He found himself constantly checking on her, as if to make sure she was real and not a twist of fantasy. Hanji fed her, changed her diapers and burped her mostly during the day and it wa his duty to do so in the night. 

Two weeks later, their child finally with a name -Leelu Zoë Ackerman- was up in the night, crying to herself. He’d been up, struck with a new dose of insomnia while Hanji snored next to him, her iPad and papers streamed all over the bed, and was up on his feet before he knew what he was doing, mindlessly gravitating towards the nursery and his kid, flicking on the soft lamp on the bedside table next to the armchair Hanji put there.

“Hey,” his long fingers wrapped around her sides gently and picked her up. She felt like a cat when he always picked her up and her body would extend shortly. Leelu calmed almost immediately at the sound and sight of her father, and her wide eyes searched him. He was almost overjoyed when they finally realized she had Hanji’s wide, warm Disney-Eyes. He carefully swiped the tears off her soft skin with his thumb. “What’s the matter, Leelu?”

She stared back at him before her face screwed up and she gave another cry. They’d learned pretty quickly that she took more after him than Hanji- she was quiet, softly sounded, hardly fussed, needy and demanding. Her lips moved around something that wasn’t there and it gave Levi the impression she was hungry. 

Minutes later they were settled in the armchair and feeding on the warm bottle of milk. The soft blanket in his lap was more for her to be wrapped in than anything else and Levi had never in his whole life felt tender and gentle like he did in moments like these. He felt whole with the baby nestled in his arm against his chest, cradled and safe from the cold world, drinking the warm milk from the bottle he held for her. He felt selfish in that he wanted this moment for him more than anything, this cleansing and pure moment solely for him.

In the dark lit by the dim lighting of the soft lamp, he stroked her mitton-clad hands and found a series of sentences strung from his brain. 

“If I’ve ever loved anyone in my whole life, Leelu, then I’ve only loved you,” the girl opened her eyes sleepily as she drank and looked up at him. His throat felt clogged up. “I love you, kid. If the whole world loves you, know that I am always the first one. And if no one loves you anymore, then you’d know I’m for sure dead.”


End file.
